To see the sights, you've gotta hike. --> Great! When's the next bio break?

I recently came back from a vacation in the Sierras that left me more in need of a vacation than when I left. As one Twitter pal said, I needed a “vacation from my vacation” at that point. That got me thinking about how we use social media in a similar way. At first, just surfing around for fun and/or profit, then huffing and puffing at some point down the road. The same seems to hold true for content producers within a company who employ social media to get their message out: unintended overkill.

If we take a step back from the grind of pumping out that daily or weekly blog (or vlog) post or whatever it is we promised to pump out, we can see that there is a need to pack ahead of time, just like on that vacation to the Sierras.

I know from experience that packing for a trip isn’t ever done and that there is just as much need to continually take stuff out of the suitcase as there is to put more in. So what I do is open up a suitcase, put it on the floor, and then start tossing stuff in as I think about it each day for a week or two before the the big day. I frequently look in and take something out realizing that it’s unnecessary, could be replaced at the local store, or isn’t worth the overall trouble.

Writing the posts in advance, even just the seedlings of the posts, can go a long way toward making the grind less of a chore and more of a playful musing that it really probably should be.

Let’s face it, if you’re like me, you need to write posts for your organization. You want to write them, even. Heck, you like to write them. But if you don’t have a good rhythm for the act of writing them yet, you need an enjoyable routine for it to be a part of the flow of your lifestream. Now is as good a time as any to work on that. That’s how the writing comes out best in my view, when it’s not battling my life, but part of the rhythm. How about you?

Photo Credit: Mark Brimm (Yosemite Valley, 2010)

Mark Brimm is Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Marcana.com and is author of AdWords University: The Complete Guide to AdWords and other previous related books on search marketing. He is currently working on a forthcoming book on social media strategy.

Mark consults on SEO & SEM, general web marketing and social media at Interface Communications Group where he is Partner and Director of Digital Marketing. Some of his specialties include SEO (search engine optimization), social media optimization (SMO), as well as PR campaign concepts, marketing plans and general web marketing related project management.

About Mark Brimm

Mark Brimm is President of 123interface.com, the Founder of Marcana.com, and runs a personal blog on social media, marketing and entrepreneurship at MarkBrimm.com. He also runs a blog on SEO & SEM at SEMinsider.com.